Herb Connolly Chevrolet President Nominated For Dealer of Year

Herb Connolly Chevrolet President Adam Connolly was nominated for the 2016 TIME Dealer of the Year award by Time magazine.

Connolly, who lives in Belmont, is one of a select group of 50 dealer nominees from across the country who will be honored at the 99th annual National Automobile Dealers Association Convention & Exposition in Las Vegas, Nevada, on April 1, 2016.

The announcement of this year’s nominees was made by Meredith Long, publisher, TIME, and Tim Russi, president of Auto Finance for Ally Financial.

“The TIME Dealer of the Year award nominees are business leaders and pillars of their communities, who have each given generously to support important charitable causes,” said Russi, in a press release. “Ally is proud to honor these dealers and to recognize their commitment to making a difference.”

The TIME Dealer of the Year award is one of the automobile industry’s most prestigious and highly coveted honors. Recipients are among the nation’s most successful auto dealers who also demonstrate a long-standing commitment to community service.

Connolly, 42, was chosen to represent the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association in the national competition – one of only 50 auto dealers from 16,000 nationwide – nominated for the 47th annual award.

“I’ve absolutely loved cars and business in general since a very young age,” Connolly said, on the company’s website. “After 22 years and counting, I’m still enjoying the business as much as I did when I was a young man.”

Connolly graduated from Belmont High. He studied business administration at the University of San Diego in San Diego, California, but his academic tenure was cut short when he returned to Massachusetts at age 20 to run his grandfather Herb’s Buick dealership.

“I started sweeping floors at my grandfather’s shop as a young boy part time after school and during school vacations and summer breaks, eventually advancing through all departments,” he said.

When his grandfather’s cancer returned after years in remission, Connolly came home to take over.

“The business skipped my father and uncle and went directly to me,” Connolly said. “I worked side by side with my grandfather from May 1992 until his passing in April 1995. Based on General Motor’s successor addendum, I was now the Buick dealer.”

In 1997, he sold the Buick franchise and opened Herb Connolly Chevrolet in Framingham. Today, he is also president of Herb Connolly Hyundai in Framingham.

Connolly is proud of the eco-friendly business model that he has established. He has incorporated a solar charging car port for the Chevrolet Volt (electric vehicle), solar panels for power and a thorough recycling program. “We believe we’ve set a good example of how we all need to take care of our environment for our children and for generations to come,” he said.

An advocate for cancer-related charities and causes, Connolly has firsthand insight into the toll the disease takes on a family, having lost his grandfather to cancer and his mother to breast cancer. He established the Kathleen D. Connolly Memorial Scholarship in memory of his mother, who succumbed to the disease in 2008. It’s awarded to a Framingham High senior who is pursuing a four-year college degree. He has also sponsored an annual golf tournament to raise money for the Mount Auburn Hospital’s Hoffman Breast Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where his mother was treated.

“Over the years, it has been so important to me to give as much as I can to all forms of cancer research,” he said. He donates to the Jimmy Fund (supports research at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute); Hyundai Hope on Wheels (benefitting pediatric cancer research); the American Cancer Society and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He also lends his time and talent to the Friends of the Framingham Library, New England Wildflower Society and the Masonic Angel Fund.

Connolly was nominated for the TIME Dealer of the Year award by Robert O’Koniewski, executive vice president of the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association.